Ashlar Quarrying and Carving in diachronic City-Building Narratives. The case of ancient Sagalassos and the Sarikaya Quarry (Southwestern Anatolia)

This paper provides a detailed interpretation of the extraction traces at the Sarıkaya quarry (southwestern Anatolia, west of Sagalassos) and of the traces of the stone carving techniques on the facings of the ashlars extracted from that quarry. This quarry and the corresponding buildings were selected because the chronology of the extraction covers a relatively lengthy period from the middle/late Hellenistic period (2nd cent. BC) until early Roman Imperial times. Additionally, all of the buildings concerned proved to be public, urban and religious, allowing reflections on why precisely this quarry was selected. The stone-carving chronology established at Sagalassos was entirely applicable to the ashlars originating from the Sarıkaya quarry. In particular, the identification of the traces observed during the early Roman Imperial period allowed us to identify a large city building site composed of the Doric temple and its propylon, part of the bouleuterion and an heroon, this last probably dedicated to the benefactor who drove the whole project.